Creating and cultivating intrinsic motivation

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Autonomy, confidence and role models are essential to intrinsic motivation to
perform any activity X, where X could be for example "writing".

* Autonomy on how and when to perform the task is crucial -- for example, if
you are assigned a writing task and you have very specific guidelines, the
stricter those are, the worse the effect on intrinsic motivation.

* Confidence: you need to be certain that you actually can perform the task
with little or no supervision, and that you can either figure out things when
you're stuck or ask for a second opinion as a last resort. You need to be
mildly challenged by the task as well. If the task is too hard, you're less
motivated -- but also if it's too easy.

* Role models play an important mission: high-level inspiring. The idea that if
you keep doing X and getting better at it, you'll be as
good/savvy/performant/famous as your role model, who you feel has practically
no other factors (luck, money) that contributed to his/her success, other than
what you're doing.